


The Voice of the Morning Star

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Addiction, BDSM, Chaptered, Drug Use, Flogging, M/M, Obsession, Painplay, Post Season 1, Post The Great Game, Pre-Slash, Riding Crop, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:39:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prompt:<br/>Sherlock likes the danger, he likes putting his absolute trust in John, letting him do anything at all, feeling free and safe even when they're doing things that are insanely dangerous and unsafe.</p><p>John thinks this is a very bad idea, feels like one day he won't stop, and he'll betray that absolute trust fatally. He accepts it regardless, because no one has ever placed their life in his hands willingly before, and it's exhilarating, even addictive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [NixieD](http://archiveofourown.org/users/NixieD/) and [sangueuk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sangueuk) for their incisive beta work!

John comes to life all at once, thrashing out of a chlorine-tinged dream into calm air and sunshine. 

He lets himself fall back on his pillow, blinking away the miasma of red dots and held breath that usually tugs him back into hopelessness, but this dream was different: he wasn't immobilised in terror. He felt — feels — fully alive, battle-tense, alert for the moment he'll be needed. He twists to sit up, scrubs hard at his face, and forces himself to really look at the crisp, peaceful room around him. 

He's been slack too long, yielding too easily to nightmares and nightmarish lethargy in the weeks since Moriarty's crazed "game." Lying about in a sleep-deprived haze, or following Sherlock blindly just for the sake of feeling he's doing _something_ to help keep them safe, to help Sherlock _find_ the bastard.

Feeling useless is its own sort of hell, one John knows he's ill-equipped to fight. Sherlock's focus has been so intense he's practically been reduced to monosyllables around the flat, and there doesn't seem to be any way for John to assist. He's watched — will continue to watch — Sherlock's back. With his hidden, forbidden gun, John will follow him in his seemingly random quests around London, listen to incomprehensible conversations with unlikely people, and try to keep scanning for any bystander who might not be so innocent. But he's given up trying to _understand_ , hasn't asked about the seventeen types of red paint evaporating in petri dishes on top of the microwave, the jar of ground glass on the mantel, the piles of phone directories he's been sharply instructed not to touch.

Sherlock's concentrated energy has been John's motive force, and a vital reassurance.

But no matter how many newspapers, log books, crime reports, and other mounds of data Sherlock chews through for hidden clues, or how many pads of graph paper he fills with notes while John dozes, he has unearthed no sign of Moriarty, and Sherlock hasn't _stopped_. Hasn't slept. Barely eats.

John pushes to his feet, rubs uneasily at the back of his neck to loosen both the muscles and the sweat-stuck hair irritating his skin — he needs a haircut. 

The only good thing, he supposes, is Sherlock hasn't been _bored_.

❧

Smuggling, such a promising angle.

 _Explosives_. 

Sherlock keeps coming back to it; CID's data is useless, Crown's better, Interpol's voluminous and it's a rush, slotting everything into matching columns — ships and planes, ports and airports, trucking companies, borders, tunnels, times, dates, average cargo volume: fractal patterns of normal behaviour, and the _scent_ of abnormal tweaks skipping across the surface on gossamer snowshoes, he _knows_ Moriarty has been busy in this area and not just with the Chinese acrobats. 

_Laser sights_. 

Black Lotus, needs to check how long Moriarty's had connections with China, if it goes back as far as Carl Powers... Stop. Back. Cargo volume. Seasonal fluctuations. Correlate with weather. Filter again. The piece he needs is here somewhere, he knows it is.

John, descending. 

_Gottle o'geer_. 

Tread heavy, slept late again, trainers, sweatshirt. Regent's Park. Safe this time of day? Reasonably. But away from CCTV, on the inner circle — needs to stay on the perimeter. Doesn't need reminding. Considering a haircut, might stop at the barber's after run; unlikely but factor into estimated length of absence. 

Distractions! Concentrate.... Average cargo — no, the mean never tells the whole story; median, mode, min, max.

 _Semtex_. 

Teacup settling in sink. 

Must _focus_. Calculate, and compare again...

❧

Sherlock is doing his thing with the palace again, conducting mental symphonies with his hands, accompanied by facial expressions that might be comical in some other circumstance. It's clear he won't hear a thing John says, so he writes a note in large block letters that says "GONE FOR A RUN" and considers using a paper clip to hang it from Sherlock's fringe where he can't miss it. He settles for wrapping it around Sherlock's phone.

John trots down the stairs, smiles good morning to Mrs Hudson, Mr Chatterjee, and Mycroft's first camera on Baker Street, takes a brisk walk up to the park, and then pushes himself with a good hard run on the Outer Circle. He ignores protests from muscles that have gotten softer than he'd like, and he's still absurdly pleased that there's no sign of the limp returning. His head feels clearer than it has in ages.

He's out for a good hour and a half before he returns to the flat, and he ducks through the kitchen to use the downstairs loo, glad to note out of the corner of his eye that Sherlock is up and moving, talking in animated tones to the skull on the mantel.

John shakes his head over the state of the bathroom, lifts a cereal bag half-full of foul granola out of the sink so he can wash his hands, and is on the verge of shouting some complaint out through the kitchen — until he swipes the cereal box up from the floor and hears a familiar hard plastic rattle. The words die in his mouth, and he stares blindly at the ugly graphics on the front of a box that has lurked untouched in the back of a cupboard since the day he moved in. Looks inside, and carefully shakes the sharps' box concealed in the bottom half. He estimates the number of used syringes within.

With the slow, silent steps he once used to approach guarded enemy compounds, John moves past the refrigerator and kitchen table, watching Sherlock through different eyes: his manic pacing from fireplace to coffee table and back again, his fingers lost in the curls at the back of his head, and the dressing gown a pale echo of the swirl of his greatcoat. All the cocaine markers are there, if John had only been _observing_ Sherlock properly.

"Sherlock," he finally says, some indecipherable melange of emotions flattening his voice so he barely recognises it.

Sherlock pivots instantly, starts to reach down for the laptop on the chair. "John, good, listen—"

"No."

Sherlock blinks, tipped off balance by the unequivocal negation, hand still stretched forward — and John reaches out and grips Sherlock's wrist, arresting the motion.

"No, I will not listen and I think I've seen quite enough already."

Sherlock's eyes — clear and bright, so _engaged_ , so _confident_ — flick down to the tell-tale box. But his breath hitches a little before he speaks. "Oh, yes, that. I—"

"Stop." John is more surprised by the level command in his voice than the fact that Sherlock actually falls silent. "Despite the cleverness of whatever you're planning to say, the only difference between Harry and alcohol, and you and _this_ , is your reasons will at least be coherent."

Sherlock shakes his head, and his fingertips twitch, just a little, shifting the tendon beneath John's fingers. "I'm not stupid, John. You think I want to incapacitate myself _now_? I'm very careful with the dosage, I just need it to help me _concentrate_ —"

"Yes, and I'm sure you've experimented to find the optimal dose for whatever problem you're working on, and _I don't care_. I don't care how careful you think you're being — you damn near gave yourself nicotine poisoning earlier this month, pushing your own limits, trying to help yourself _think_." 

His whole body tenses at that particular memory, fingers tightening on Sherlock's wrist, and Sherlock glares at John, that imperious face like gaunt marble — except for the narrow, vulnerable gap between his lips, barely letting his ragged breath escape. The all-too-familiar defensive anger of the addict right there, on the tip of his tongue, and yet he says...nothing. Is held in check somehow by the flat voice of the desert, the grip compressing his radius and ulna.

Hands steady as stone, John sets the cereal box down next to the laptop and takes hold of Sherlock's sleeve. Watches Sherlock's face while he pushes the fabric up above the crook of his left elbow, the tense muscles playing under his skin in confusing patterns, like letters refusing to form comprehensible words.

John looks down, already knowing what he will find.

The track marks are neat and discreet; Sherlock isn't a street junkie, hurrying to shoot up in some dark corner before he can be discovered, and he is undoubtedly deft enough to avoid the through-and-through punctures and venous bruising that leave the ugliest traces. But he hasn't bothered to hide the evidence altogether. The only bit of reassurance is the rate of healing John sees on the older marks; the injections aren't too frequent, Sherlock hasn't — yet — been coasting from high to high, unable to function without.

John absently rubs his thumb over the marks before letting Sherlock's sleeve fall back into place.

"Coming off — if you do — is going to be a beast."

"And if I don't?"

John tilts his head, assessing Sherlock in the same quiet, challenging way he'd assessed Mycroft, one day a lifetime ago. 

"Then you don't. And you'll have to find another flatmate."

A statement of the facts. His moving out might kill them both, but he really isn't about to make an exception for Sherlock he won't make for his sister.

"No. You need to stay _here_."

The unspoken _with me_ is quite plain; John gazes calmly back at him, letting his conditions hang in the air.

After an uncomfortable moment, Sherlock looks down. John realises, with a faint flush, that his fingers are still clamped tightly around Sherlock's wrist. 

He starts to let go but a flare of — _something_ — crosses Sherlock's face, setting off a tic in his cheek, a crack in the marble façade. The calculation slips from eyes no longer hyper-focused on the consuming problem of finding Moriarty's next move, and all at once John glimpses the frantic exhaustion of a prey animal on his last legs, unable to escape or to rest; a creature on the verge of bursting his own heart, or veering away from safety into some despairing sacrifice to lead the predator away from his nest.

Sherlock jerks against his hold, trying to turn away.

"No, don't," John says, hand tightening again and his own pulse racing along with Sherlock's under his fingertips. " _Don't_. Sherlock."

❧

_Don't_. Sherlock shakes his head, eyes fixed on a point beyond John's right sleeve (Fusiliers sweatshirt, a form of armour; frayed at the neck). Rewind, retreat.

 _I'm glad no one saw that_. 

John saw. John sees. John sees too much.

Sherlock's breathing fast, but not so loud as to drown out traffic outside (cabs, an Aston Martin), and John's watching too close, disquieted. Stop. Shut down, emotion only interferes, too much—

"Bedroom. Now," John snaps, a hard no-nonsense order; Sherlock's mouth opens on a protest, brow creasing, and yet his feet move, wrist carried along in John's grip.

John pulls Sherlock through the kitchen (paint experiment, list of Semtex tracking additives, lingering Orange Pekoe — must be out of Earl Grey) and down the hall (John's sweat: strong, came this way after his run) — he's been stupid, careless with the evidence but John's been shaken, blind, not himself; Sherlock needs to stop Moriarty _(no one ever gets to me)_ , to put everything to rights, because he knows he's the only one who can—

John pushes the bedroom door open, opinions packed dense and tight behind his lips, unreadable, unguessable. Sherlock's internal palace is in chaos, jolted by explosives, and what he understands of John's expressions and moods is as jumbled as the riot of research (Barts' hiring practices, earbud distributors) and half-finished projects (Vivienne Westwood fabric samples, flash drives full of Dublin accents) spread across his bed and floor.

Sighing harshly, John pushes Sherlock toward the bed. 

"If it's important," (military snap; faint echo of Scots drill sergeant in his vowels) "move it."

Every piece is important, it's too much, he doesn't know where to start. John is sharp, impatient, wholly present: blessedly himself again.

 _Papers first, the layers will be hardest to reconstruct_ , and Sherlock stacks and shifts the piles hastily to the top of his chest of drawers. Behind him, decisive motion sweeps everything else onto the floor, a cacophony of thud (croquet ball) and crunch (jewel cases) and slither (police coat) and then (don't let the receipts slip behind...) — a short, brisk movement and stillness.

"Sherlock." Voice odd, low and absolutely level and only slightly breathless, and Sherlock turns worriedly—

John stands beside the bed like a compelling statue (an Egyptian god in brown quartzite, a Roman general on a triumphal arch), holding Sherlock's riding crop.

John, holding his riding crop.

John. A crop.

 _John_.

❧

Jesus, what is he thinking? This is a bad idea, John tells himself, very bad, worse than letting Harry take him on his first pub crawl.

Sherlock might have surrendered to the hard tone, to John's grip on his wrist. John might remember the calming aftereffects of a good thrashing all too well from late nights with an adventurous girlfriend in med school. The crop on his floor might be suggestive. But this is _Sherlock_ — odds on he's never...

He is utterly still, though. Not a twitch, not a single sardonic comment. His eyes aren't flicking about, vibrating with his thoughts, chasing from John's hand around the riding crop to his shoulder to his thigh to his shoes and back again; they're pinned solely on John's face.

Sherlock's absolute attention steals John's breath away. 

The small, sane voice in the back of his mind makes one last-ditch attempt to tell him the very idea should be taken out into an alley and shot.

 _You're angry, he's high, you've never even discussed the_ possibility, _much less the kind of trust and responsibility and limits you'd need, and he's obsessed himself right to the verge of a breakdown..._

But Sherlock isn't obsessing about Moriarty right this second. He's staring, as if John holding a riding crop is less believable — or more dangerous — than John holding a gun. 

John wants to hold that attention for as long as he can, and he'll take any bad idea he can get if it works.

"Take off your dressing gown." 

John fixates on Sherlock's face, strained and pale in the heavily curtained room; more than half convinced he'll get a _no_ , or _why_ , or a quiet scoff, or perhaps even _dull_. Rejection, a reprieve, a chance to talk this out—

Sherlock lifts slow hands to the knot at his waist, unties the gown, and drops it off his bare shoulders. He's wearing only thin pyjama trousers underneath, hanging loosely around his hips.

John has been surprised more than once since they first met by Sherlock's strength and stamina; he should have known that there was more substance beneath the clothes than his carefully-crafted silhouette suggests. An unexpected flutter of fascination hinders his breathing; Sherlock's frame is starkly beautiful, if underfed at the moment, the muscle lean and defined against his lanky bones.

John swallows, disquieted. Rationalises: his body's conjuring attraction because he associates domination with desire; before this moment he's never been the slightest bit interested in another man. And sex with Sherlock is out of the question for a dozen reasons; he shakes his head, buries his response beneath the desperate hope this extremity will be enough to stop the deadly roundabout and let Sherlock sleep.

Quiet his mind. Settle him.

But if John doesn't follow through _now_ , the moment is going to pass them by.

"Your safeword is 'phosphorus'. Say it."

" _Phosphorus_." Sherlock's voice is muted, otherworldly, but his eyes are clear and cognizant, acknowledging the word and the concept and the implied promises — every intoxicating layer of his attention still pinned on John's next action.

"Turn around," John instructs, before his composure has a chance to crack. He tests the spring of the crop, sending it hissing through the air.

Sherlock turns quietly, and bows his head.

A shiver courses through John, something dark and unnameable settling at the base of his spine. He reaches with measuring fingertips to feel the thin skin over Sherlock's scapula, considering likely angles, how many years it's been since he's done anything like this. Checks himself for lingering anger or fright.

"On the bed," he finally instructs, voice gruff, no longer expecting resistance.

Sherlock slides onto the sheets, pushes the crumpled duvet away with his feet, and tucks his arms down along his sides; turns his head to look at John, settles into an apprehensive stillness. John watches his eyes until he sees a flicker of acquiescence, and brings the crop down across his back, the tip just crossing the acromion near the point of his shoulder.

Sherlock blinks repeatedly, but makes no sound.

Just the one strike, just for this moment because John doesn't trust himself to apply more until he's seen the welt rise, assessed Sherlock's sensitivity — and he can pretend he's being terribly rational but his hand tightens on the grip as he watches the white skin change colours, watches untouchable Sherlock quiver.

He doesn't resist the urge to trace a finger down the mark, to feel the heat of the blood beneath the skin. Satisfaction — calm, rational satisfaction, that he judged the force correctly, he lies to himself — flows warm and sleek through his muscles. John strikes again, and again; energised, he envisions a narrow slanted lattice down Sherlock's back from shoulder to just above his hip, and wills it into reality stroke by stroke by stroke.

❧

Sherlock's eyes close, and his mind tumbles weightlessly, exiled from a body reduced to raw response. Packs of words — _endorphin, masochist, catharsis_ — circle in the darkness, fighting to form thoughts and plans and worries and ideas, but the shocks of pain chase them back, back, crackling like an electric fence to keep them at bay.

In formless space, he huddles, he cringes, he has no control. He _must cringe_ , he has no choice. He braces against the rhythm, regular, predictable, and it does no good. The pain always shocks.

He floats in sensation, he sinks in exhaustion. He is warm. Protected. The pain encircles him, buffets him, lifts him out of time and causality, loosens muscle from muscle and bone from bone...

"Look at me."

The words lunge out of the darkness at Sherlock, snarling in his face, and he flinches, makes a noise. The words run in packs _(Look, see, eye, why? At, with, between, me, you, John, John's face...)_ and he can't escape, he is no longer safe, his eyes snap open on a demand _(look at John's face, connect, communicate...)_ that yanks his brain back online.

"Sherlock?" Light fingertips touch Sherlock's unmarked shoulder, and he shudders. John (still fully dressed, sweating again, _no, stop observing, stop, stop, stop!)_ searches his face, rolling the crop, breath catching in the back of his throat for more questions...

"Don't — don't speak, John." His voice sounds... _unhinged_ is the word that comes to him and it fits, he's doorless, exposed. One desolate breath. "I can't — thinking, words, I can't stop..."

"All right," John says, voice thick; he brushes the back of his hand over Sherlock's cheek. "No more thinking."

Sherlock chooses to accept it as a command, exhales in relief. John pulls back, fingers sparking over the oblique marks like a stick rattling along the electric fence; tensions release, words retreat. John adjusts position and stance, and the crop comes down on the welts crosswise, striking again and again until Sherlock is safe once more.

❧

When he finishes the second set of lashes, completing the pattern of diamonds across Sherlock's back, John is approaching a sort of calm centeredness — more crucially, however, Sherlock's eyes are glazed over and he's the most relaxed John has ever seen him. Anyone else's breathing might be ragged with pain or arousal or some combination of the two; Sherlock's is level and even. John's fingers flex around the handle of the riding crop and he reins in the desire to see how much further he can go.

With someone else, he'd provide verbal reassurance or praise, after, but the disturbing memory of how badly shaken Sherlock had been when he'd asked John not to speak lingers. With Sherlock, he worries about drawing him up too soon.

John sets the crop aside and leans over Sherlock on the bed. He draws light fingers down slowly between his brows, counting on unconscious reflexes to pull his eyelids down. When John takes his hand away, Sherlock's eyes remain closed. Protecting Sherlock from getting chilled wins the debate over leaving the painful welts bare; John tugs the duvet upward, settles it over him as gently as he can, then strokes Sherlock's hair until his breathing finishes settling into the rhythms of sleep.

John steps back carefully. He rubs at his shoulder, contemplates Sherlock for several minutes, and doesn't try to unravel any of what he's not quite thinking or feeling. Eventually, he toes off his shoes and slips out into the kitchen to grab two bottles of water from the "safe" shelf in the refrigerator. One he drains himself; the other he brings back into Sherlock's room and sets down near the crop as quietly as he can.

He considers and dismisses the idea of settling on the bed — too much chance of waking Sherlock, too many questions John isn't sure he's able to answer. Too much respect for _married to my work_.

But he needs to stay where he can watch over Sherlock. Aside from the big bed the room is light on furniture but John's fairly sure the mound of detritus next to the wardrobe hides the kidnapped kitchen chair for which he'd never quite gotten around to arranging a search party. With a sigh and more care than he'd shown earlier, John clears more evidence of Sherlock's frenetic obsession and shifts the chair nearer the bed. Unsure how long Sherlock will sleep, John tugs the least intimidating book off of the shelves, and sits down with it on his lap.

When Sherlock wakes, John will wait for him to break the silence. He's not likely to be in any shape to talk about what they've done, at first, but sooner or later they'll have to.

John doesn't think either of them are _ever_ going to be ready.


	2. Chapter 2

A piece of paper falling to the floor. It's always some small, stupid noise that wakes him, Sherlock thinks sullenly, and once he's awake there's no going back. Especially now.

 _Burn the_ heart _out of you,_ Moriarty whispers down the back of his neck. 

The muscles along his spine pull tight (God no, too much to do, why is he resting?) and he barely registers the pain that shimmers across his skin before the whisper of moving paper becomes a closing book and _there is someone in his room_ —

Sherlock rolls abruptly towards the opposite edge of the mattress, heart pounding, skin throbbing. He ends up with one foot on the floor, one knee still on the bed, one hand on the tantō under his pillow; and the someone is John, only John (still in his Fusiliers shirt, eyes wide, sweat dried, finger in the preface of Butler's _Apiculture)_ , blinking at him from a chair on the far side of the bed. 

John rises slowly (trainers off, knees creaking) and sets the book down. Sherlock tries to rein in his ragged breathing. He's strung tight as a piano wire anticipating the fall of the hammer, eyes darting around a room gone foreign: his carefully constructed mess disrupted, disordered, shaken to bits. The fiery pain across his back and arse attaches itself to John, bits of the day (cocaine, confrontation, command) falling into place in his memory but leading up to a black abyss.

Sherlock slowly draws his hand from beneath the pillow, rubs it down over his face, and it _isn't_ shaking; not at all. His pulse drums in the too-tight skin across his cheekbones, and adrenaline saturates his growl. 

"What the _hell_ are you doing in here?"

John pales, lips tightening — fleeting fear, or regret, or anger — impossible to say, he's too quick to sweep the evidence away with several rapid blinks.

"I — waiting for you to wake up." John's posture is stiff, the words clipped, as though his presence in Sherlock's private space ought to be considered the most natural thing in the world.

"Why?" Sherlock snaps, discomfited; the inside of his lip tastes faintly of dried blood. Caught in his teeth as the crop came down hard...

He inhales. Stale air, much too warm. His eyes skate back and forth, finding the riding crop next to a bottle of water on the bedside cabinet; his mind skitters around the edges of what this thing they've done _means_ (flagellation, obligation, complication) and dances with the alien desire to demand that John do it again so he won't _need_ to comprehend.

Abruptly, Sherlock pushes himself the rest of the way off the bed, fighting for equilibrium: scattered pieces of Moriarty (need to re-organise, re-classify everything) shift under his bare feet, but John is the one (John, unyielding brown quartzite, John and the crop) tilting the tectonic plates beneath him.

❧

Sherlock staggers to his feet, and John checks the urge to reach for him. Suppresses the chill slicing through his insides: mortification that he may have crossed a half-dozen lines with one giant misstep, apprehension that he might have cocked up everything that makes this discordant harmony of theirs work.

"Why am I watching over you? Because roughly three hours ago I thrashed your back and backside." John's brows knit — Sherlock is pale with vasovagal response, standing up too fast on top of extended under-nourishment, but going across or around the bed to steady him risks worsening a paranoia already stoked high by Moriarty and cocaine. "Do you really not remember?"

Sherlock, clearly focused on remaining upright, grimaces at the floor. In the darkened room his white torso pulls the eye like a sculpture on display at the centre of a museum gallery.

"No, okay, you do. I've just—" John knows better than to finish that thought; bites back any intimation that Sherlock might be feeling anything at all, let alone fear. He picks up the bottle of water and holds it out. "Look, drink this and have a seat so I can look you over, will you?"

Sherlock eyes him suspiciously; John focuses on projecting 'doctor' above all else. On wanting Sherlock to rehydrate, to sit down before he falls down, on wanting to have an entirely clinical look at his back. After an encounter like this, John always needs to inspect — half healer's instinct and half devilish pride in his handiwork — and if he were dealing with someone else, John might be intimate and playful about it. Tease the injured skin, tease his partner, tease the possibility of more.

But this situation is too complicated, and he isn't dealing with someone he can cajole back into bed, he's dealing with _Sherlock_.

He'd consented to the game easily enough in the midst of his mania, obviously familiar with the rules, and John's not entirely certain what to make of that apparent contradiction to "not my area." But after Sherlock's wild flares of enthusiasm he sinks into black moods, when he doesn't want to be touched or spoken to, or even see movement in his line of sight. And coming down from the cocaine high is surely making the swing worse today.

The largest problem is: John isn't about to leave him alone, and he knows all too well when Sherlock is in this mode he can only push so far before Sherlock lashes back — and he knows exactly where John is most vulnerable. John doesn't intend to lose his temper enough to stalk away this time, but Sherlock can still make it damned uncomfortable for him to stay.

So John makes sure his tone is simple and neutral when he asks, "Please. Come and sit."

❧

Sherlock watches John's face — stoic, stony, as it always is when he means to hide his feelings, though confusion and worry and a jumble of less definable things escape into the mobile skin around his eyes. Aware of how far they've shifted, but trying to step back to neutral territory, keeping it formal, medical: that firm, practical line to his mouth. And yes, the request is only sensible.

Pressing his thumb against the knuckles curled tight under his palm, Sherlock stiffly picks his way around the chaos (necktie with subtle death's-head print, black webbing straps, fifteen-inch cable ties) on the floor — thoughts spilling back into familiar channels when bits of paper (handwriting in blue ink, notes on bomb wiring, four different interviews; faintly yellow receipt half-crumpled beneath chartreuse-banded pants) catch at his eye, forcing his gaze to the chest of drawers where he knows he set everything else...

"Just a few minutes," John insists, crumbling the tentative connections. Sherlock's lip jerks into a snarl, but the doctor's eyes are calm, stern, matter-of-fact; he pulls the chair a few inches farther from the bed. Watches and waits.

_A few minutes._

So difficult to let the distracting problem go. 

Sherlock exhales and scrapes the waistband of his pyjamas higher on his hips; deliberately bringing sleepy welts to prickling wakefulness. He steps around the foot of the bed, straddles the chair, sinks down until his arms fold across the crest rail, and rests his forehead upon them; the exposure of his skin to John's eyes and hands feels palpable, like a new form of heat rising from his back and shoulders.

The physical clamour of his body drowns out the mental, and it's what he wanted before but he hates the pointless tagalong emotions that cocaine has left behind, crackling like static, sapping his will even as they spur and scatter his restless mind. He itches to get up and move again, at the same time he aches to close his eyes.

_("But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.")_

He feels warm hands on his shoulders, the brush of a thumb at his nape (like the remembered touch across his shoulder blade, across the damaged skin on his inner elbow) but it's gone again before he can react. (To nothing, to nothingness.) Then fingers apply a daub of cream at the intersection between two welts; a faint hesitation but otherwise impersonal, clinical.

 _Of course_. Sherlock swallows roughly, trying to moisten dry tongue and throat. _Probably best this way_.

Was all of this merely a form of extreme, unconventional _treatment?_ Sherlock knows he is (pig-headed, exasperating, unreasonable) an unusual patient, and John's never been one to worry about the outside world's ethics so long as he lives by his own. And he's no stranger to applying a crop to human skin, or safewords, or—

"When did you last eat?" John asks, worried but detached, fingertips smoothing more cream over a diamond of welts below his shoulder blade. 

"Dim sum," ( _har gao_ , Royal China Club, night before last), Sherlock murmurs automatically, far more interested in reasoning out why none of John's girlfriends seem the _safeword_ type than—

John sighs harshly, and his hands slide away from Sherlock's back.

Sherlock's skin contracts with a muted ripple of pain and dismay, and he turns his head away, ear and temple lying against his folded arms. John's taken the time to prove to him, scientifically, that he needs to eat more often than he does, but it slows him down in more ways than one and he's simply had no appetite _("when your day is done and you wanna run, cocaine")_... Oh. Stupid.

❧

John gazes at the opposing wall, clenching his teeth on all the useless names he wants to call himself, as well as the urge to drag Sherlock into the kitchen by the scruff of his neck. The paranoid adrenaline is _finally_ starting to drain away, leaving Sherlock slumped over the back of the chair, spine and shoulders curved beneath streaks of reddened skin; the pose defuses John's frustration, leaving behind a complicated urge to slide hands up Sherlock's biceps, curl reassuring arms around him, coax him to eat something but — _Sherlock_. An unwelcome touch or a demand that he eat right this minute will put him back on the defensive. Far better to Keep Calm and Carry On.

"Night before last." John says, mild as he can manage. "Explains the light-headedness. Dinner soon, then."

He forces an even breath; he knows he's been sluggish, detached, essentially sleepwalking through daily tasks like shaving and cooking, but this revelation suggests he's been much worse than he'd thought. Sherlock is brilliant and stubborn and sneaky — John is sure even Mycroft and Mummy had a hard time catching him as a child if he engineered a way to avoid his vegetables — but John's good with people, he's been told he's good with _Sherlock_ , and he still failed to catch the little tells that Sherlock was hiding things from him. _Christ_. A cocaine relapse. Close to thirty hours without food. Longer than that without real sleep.

And subtler things, beyond the usual ways his obsessions drive him to extremes: little markers of post-traumatic stress John doubts Sherlock would recognise as such in himself, let alone acknowledge to anyone else.

Sherlock has turned his head enough that John can see his eyes, shadowed but catching again on the stacks of paper on the chest, the scattered detritus by the wardrobe: the overwhelming puzzle dragging his mind back to full speed. John's body feels heavy with sympathetic fatigue. Sherlock rarely takes proper care of his physical needs but he has to know he's diminishing his own efficiency by driving so hard.

John's lips tighten. As if there's any _logic_ to this.

Still, the firmest order in the world can't stop Sherlock thinking, and tending body and mind at the same time hasn't proven impossible so long as John's on his game. He nods sharply, shifts his feet enough to let Sherlock know he's moving, reaches out to wrap Sherlock's hand around the water bottle.

"You drink that. I'm going to get some boxes and things to help us organise all this." Sherlock lifts his head and blinks at him; the slow rise and fall of his lids at odds with the swift scan covering John top to toe and back again. His shoulders slump a bit, though John isn't certain whether he should read it as relief or weariness. Or a winning — or losing — move in the battle against the merciless cravings for intravenous cocaine, for that matter.

John waits until Sherlock unscrews the bottle cap, then steps out to the kitchen, leans on his forearm against the side of the refrigerator for a moment: filling his lungs, chasing away his own lingering adrenaline, the frustration and guilt that will only get in the way of doing his job properly. He snags an empty copier paper box and tosses in manila envelopes, a thick handful of plastic freezer bags, and all of Sherlock's coloured permanent markers, and adds another bottle of water. He quickly fills a plate with small piles of crisps, biscuits, cheese, anything easily to hand on their too-barren shelves, then hefts the box against his hip and returns to the bedroom.

No sign Sherlock's gone scrabbling for his stash; he's sitting cross-legged on the bed with his piles of papers in front of him, the bottle on the mattress at his side, capped again but three-quarters empty. John sets the plate down within Sherlock's reach, starts unloading the box.

"Slow down a bit, will you? I need to catch up with what you've found." Narrowed eyes flicker coldly toward him, but he doesn't need a nod to read the way Sherlock shifts gears from analysis to distillation, and a knot in his chest he hadn't been aware of loosens: John is part of the hunt again. He tugs the chair close to the bed, pulls the stack of big envelopes onto his lap, points at one pile discrete from the rest. "Is all this related?"

Sherlock takes another drink of water, tongue chasing a stray drop across his lower lip. "The pagers the hostages were given. No leads there."

John shakes his head. _PAGERS_ , he writes on the outside of an envelope. "No, I want you to explain it to me. I missed all the deductions you made along the way."

Sherlock hands the stack to him. Earnest sparks light his eyes, and he picks up a biscuit. John pretends not to notice, leafing through the invoices and purchase orders and manuals and notes.

"Different brands, but boxes of each vanished from the same PageOne delivery truck in Chatham on fifteenth February. The driver was investigated but didn't steal anything, nor did he recall anything of value to me in tracking who did. I'm certain Moriarty has destroyed the other stolen pagers, or hoarded them out of sight, but I've set what little I can in place to detect them if they should be put into use. The nobodies who connected the pagers to the different networks, sans legitimate customer accounts, were hired pseudonymously on a work board for freelance programmers. Various frequency bands, network transmitters, emails, IPs and proxies were involved, but suffice to say none of it has led anywhere useful."

John nods and scribbles notes on the envelope, trusting the summary to hit all the pertinent details; giving Sherlock a chance to eat his biscuit.

"Only you, Sherlock, could get so much out of so little," he smiles. Playing his accustomed role, putting Sherlock back at ease, for all that he means every word.

Sherlock's lips curve just a little in return, even as he dismissively flicks a crumb off his chin. "Totally mundane."

"Anything else pager-related?" Sherlock holds a second biscuit between his teeth while his fingers comb the rest of his pile but he's already shaking his head. John tucks the papers in and drops the envelope into the box unsealed.

"Next?" he says, marker poised.

Sherlock gets through all of the papers and most of the food on the plate in about half an hour, but John can see he's starting to tire again despite voice and gestures sharp with suppressed urgency; Moriarty and cocaine again, goading Sherlock forward and collecting their toll for every step he takes. John wants to tell him they can leave the rest of the mess for later, but he's starting to see that the disorder itself is a strain on Sherlock — chaotic as the lot had looked, the arrangement had been an external manifestation of dozens of different rooms in Sherlock's mind palace. John sighs and stands, sets the plate on the chair, and pushes the box of envelopes against the wall by the door.

Sherlock frowns, but John gathers the plastic bags, walks around the other side of the bed where most of the objects he'd swept off had landed and, still focused on Sherlock, settles on the floor. "You lie down, and tell me how you've classified each of these things. We'll just organise now. You can save the deductions for later."

The suggestion works better than John had hoped; Sherlock stretches out on his side at the edge of the bed where he can point at one significant item after another. The papers had been neutral — John has to force a more clinical mindset to stop himself recoiling from things like the pallid earbud, identical to the one Moriarty had inserted so repulsively into his ear canal.

Even so, they don't need long to gather bags full of "M's background," and "M's wardrobe", and "Jim from IT", while tossing all the "irrelevants" — like the croquet ball — into Sherlock's laundry basket.

Sherlock has gathered samples or duplicates of _every_ conceivable physical detail of their encounter at the pool, despite the originals that vanished with Moriarty, or are bagged and tagged in an evidence locker somewhere. Even after four months of watching him work, John still struggles to understand how — in the middle of five minutes of high-tension fencing with a lunatic — Sherlock could have registered enough of the stitching to have tracked down the bloody _tailor_ who fitted the man's Westwood suit.

Though Sherlock hasn't found Moriarty yet, it obviously isn't for lack of massive, concentrated effort. John licks his lower lip, realising the things in this room are only the core of Sherlock's investigation; no telling how much farther he's cast his nets, given the incomprehensibles spread through the rest of their living space.

Paint samples. Glass. Clues he knew John wouldn't follow. Sherlock had shut away anything John might have recognised, if he'd stumbled across them elsewhere in the flat: the webbed harness that held the explosives, the trigger wires, the _fucking_ anorak...

John swallows, glances up, and then looks down again quickly, catching the question back. Sherlock's eyelids are drooping; he's right on the edge of sleep, hand tucked under the pillow beneath his cheek, undoubtedly atop the weapon he'd reached for on waking. John takes his time labelling the last couple of bags while Sherlock's breathing deepens. When John's sure Sherlock is out, he quietly carries everything back to the box on the other side of the bed, leaving nothing but clean floor for Sherlock to see when he wakes. There are a few more bits and bobs to sort near the wardrobe and under the bed, but they can wait.

Rubbing at the back of his neck, John looks again at Sherlock, stretched out on top of the duvet like a fetishist's version of Snow White: red welts against pale skin caressed by black curls. Though he _acts_ more like Red Riding Hood — traipsing about in the woods by himself, confident he can overcome any wolf he might encounter.

John swallows hard again, ribcage tight with that same alarm that had driven him to reach for his gun at the college the first time he'd seen clearly what an idiot Sherlock could be. Too fucking _clever_ to let a mere serial killer, or poison, or cocaine, get the upper hand. Too used to working on his own, and too proud and stubborn to even consider he might _need_ help, let alone ask. Not a hero, fine; just a stupid arse trying to solve his puzzles, and only incidentally protecting other people.

John shuts his eyes, forces his fingers to ease on the doorjamb, considers what else needs taking care of. He slips downstairs to have a quick conversation with Mrs Hudson, asks her help in arranging a "post-thinking-binge" meal, but there's nothing else he can think of that requires his attention more than keeping an eye on Sherlock; keeping things as quiet as possible in the hope he can rest a little longer.

The soft noises of the lunch crowd downstairs at Speedy's carry up to John; feels like it's been an age since he came back from his run rather than a few hours. He returns to the chair, picks up _Apiculture_ , and goes back to studying the relationships of bees.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for The Voice of the Morning Star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/479399) by [moonblossom graphics (moonblossom)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonblossom/pseuds/moonblossom%20graphics)




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